Andrew Sullivan, NY Mag
If you need a role model for life in a plague, it is hard to beat Samuel Pepys. Pepys (pronounced Peeps) was a man about town in the London of the late 17th century, a member of Parliament and of the Royal Society, and an official in the Royal Navy as the British were fighting the Dutch. But his true claim to fame is that he wrote a personal diary for ten years of his life in the 1660s. Kept private in his lifetime, and much of it in code, he used it to tell the story of his days and nights... Читать дальше...
Jacobs, Shear & Wong, NYT
China’s president pledged $2 billion to fight the virus, a move the United States criticized as an effort to head off scrutiny of its handling of the pandemic.
Aleksei Sorbale, Riddle
In 1984, the Financial Times journalist David Buchan called the USSR “Upper Volta with rockets”, ironically noting the poor quality of governance, an inefficient Soviet bureaucracy, and the irrational distribution of resources. Post-Soviet Russia has undergone significant socio-economic and political transformations since then. Even so, there has been no significant improvement in the quality of public administration. According to the Worldwide Governance...
Clara Ferreira-Marques, Bloomberg
The rapid spread of Covid-19 has strained a Russian health system that’s suffering from poor funding and incomplete post-Soviet reforms.
Vitali Shkliarov, RealClearWorld
One of the most frequent questions I am asked about Russian politics is what it will take for new leadership to take hold in Russia. President Vladimir Putin has been in power for 20 years, and he has proposed amendments to the Russian Constitution that would keep him there for many years still. He enjoys consistently high popularity ratings that most world leaders probably eye with envy. He has seemed to be on the brink of demise before, but has managed to navigate every challenge. Читать дальше...
Gideon Rachman, Financial Times
For both pragmatic and democratic reasons, it would be lunacy to sue the German government.
Dexter Filkins, New Yorker
For decades, Ayatollah Khamenei has professed enmity with America. Now his regime is threatened from within the country.
David Patrikarakos, Spectator
Throughout the lockdown I’ve been nagged by a persistent thought. As I sit indoors and read the news; as I alternate between cooking and takeaways; as I venture outside into the socially-distanced streets; and as I listen to commentators catastrophise about lockdown Britain, it is there. The thought is simple: what if all this – the confinement and the fear and the confusion and the ever-rising death count – what if all this is the good part?
Stratfor
Mexico is relying ever more on its military to manage the country's perennial security problems, as cartel activity continues to rise against the backdrop of COVID-19. On May 11, President Andres Manual Lopez Obrador’s government issued a decree ordering the army to formally support Mexico’s National Guard in all public safety tasks nationwide for a term lasting no more than five years. While the military’s presence in Mexico's fight against organized crime is not new, Lopez Obrador’s... Читать дальше...
Thomas Shattuck & Aaron Stein, FPRI
The WHO could face a crisis of legitimacy if Taiwan is excluded from this year’s WHA meeting due to the country’s stellar response: why exclude a country that has responded so well to something that not even the United States could handle? For me, that’s the most important question for consideration, but Beijing’s grasp on these international organizations and member-countries makes Taiwan’s fight for inclusion an uphill battle. We’ll see what happens next week. Читать дальше...
Nataliya Bugayova, The Hill
Low oil prices and the COVID-19 pandemic have weakened Russian President Vladimir Putin, but not enough to threaten his power or constrain his foreign policy ambitions — for now.
R. Dergham, National
Those optimistic about a rapprochement need to calm down ahead of crucial meetings in both Washington and Tehran this week.
T. Kaiser, Die Welt
Germany has the resources to weather the storm, but not everyone in Europe is convinced that's a good thing.
C. Candar, Al Monitor
Turkey needs to adopt a softer foreign policy to handle the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis it's triggered, but the government's rhetoric makes such a shift highly unlikely.
M. Akyol, Bush Center
Mustafa Akyol serves as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and as a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. The Turkish journalist has written widely about freedom of speech and religion, including authoring the book, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty.
Читать дальше...
King Abdullah II with Der Spiegel
King Abdullah II: It brings new uncertainties. Health and food security are becoming valuable commodities. Europe has fertile agricultural lands. They will be hoarding food supplies, understandably. We too have begun to invest heavily in storing our wheat and we've got enough for another year and a half. We're quite comfortable. But what happens after that? In many places, the...
Samanth Subramanian, Politico EU
Vandals and conspiracists across the Continent have a new target: 5G telephone towers.
Tridivesh Singh Maini, NOL
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade agreement, also known as CPTPP 11, consists of 11 member states (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam).
Michael Albertus, Foreign Policy
The country should address the worsening coronavirus crisis with policies that will also repair long-standing inequality.
Karen Greenberg, TomDispatch
The stage for bringing “there” to the homeland was aptly set when President Trump declared the country at war with a disease. Suddenly, America’s forever wars of the twenty-first century were no longer distant affairs. "War" was here and now, and this time we weren’t the invaders, but the ones who had been invaded.
E. Kao, TNI
The coronavirus is showing the world that Beijing isn’t just seeking to avoid accountability, it is seeking to change the rules.
Bobby McDonagh, Irish Times
British envoys may be deploying a combination of indignation and stubbornness
Tom McTague, The Atlantic
